All posts by Mr Hardy
Walk to School Week 05.10.20
Next week is the national Walk to School Week. We would like to encourage as many pupils as possible to walk to school next week. We are hopeful that this will be a BIG celebration and a whole lot of FUN! To make the week special, we would love for our pupils to dress up each day. The themes are as follows:
| Day | Walk to school wearing… |
| Monday | silly socks or odd shoes! |
| Tuesday | crazy hair! |
| Wednesday | a hat and/or sunglasses! |
| Thursday | bright colours! |
| Friday | something purple for Ayrshire Hospice. |
Walking to school helps children feel happier and healthier and they arrive refreshed, fit and ready to learn. More families walking means fewer cars on the road during the school run, helping to reduce congestion and pollution at the school gates. If you live too far away or don’t have time to walk the whole way to school, you can ‘Park and Stride’.
If you would like to make a small monetary donation towards the Ayrshire Hospice on Friday, this would be gratefully received, although there is no obligation to do so.
Remember to take a selfie and tag us on Twitter! @HolmstonPS #WalktoSchoolWeek
Holmston Primary’s Lockdown Cookbook
During lockdown, one of your home learning challenges was to send in recipes you had made. These have now been compiled and published and are available for £5.00 from the school. We can wait to try some of these dishes out!
The New Session
We have had a great start to the new year. The pupils have settled quickly into the new routines. We are keeping in our class bubbles and will continue with our staggered starts, breaks and finish times. Regular hand washing and sanitising have become a regular part of the school day. We have additional cleaning going on throughout the school during the day as well as after school. Unfortunately we are unable to have visitors in the school at the moment but we can be contacted by phone or email. Members of staff are also available in the playground before and after school. Please remember to socially distance when you are in the playground and try not to linger after you have picked up child up or have dropped them off.
Please check our Twitter account for regular updates. Stay safe.
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New P1 Transition Activities
If you managed to come along to our P1 transition visits, you will have received your copy of the Bear Hunt. There is an electronic copy of our Bear Hunt activities for you to try out over the summer in the New P1s section of the website – you just need to scroll down to the bottom of the page. Have fun!
Virtual School Trip to Edinburgh Zoo
The week we have been having lots of fun in some of the classes planning and going on our virtual trip to Edinburgh Zoo. Som eof the other classes will be going next week. It has been great. Here are some of the pictures.
Report Cards 2020
You child’s report card has been posted out today. If you wish to give any feedback we will set up and send the link to a Microsoft Form for you to add any comments. Once again, thank you for all that you are doing. We hope you enjoy reading them.
Friday 5th June Update
It has been great seeing all the recipes coming in for our Lockdown Cookbook. Mrs Reid is busy putting them altogether! Thank you to the parents that have completed the online survey – that is really helpful and we will get back to you next week about some of the issues raised.
We have had confirmation that the building work will not happen this summer.
Over the next three weeks, staff are going to be working in school to set up for our return in August, we will also be in the Hub on Tuesday. We will also need to work together to plan the way that the learning will look when we return. This approach to learning with some happening in school and some happening at home is called ‘Blended Learning’ and we will provide you with all the details and expectations before we start back. With this in mind staff will not always be able to work on Teams as often as they have been but you can find lots of activities in the useful links page on this website to explore.
It was lovely to see some of our families during Mr Morrow’s maths workshop and we can’t wait to see you all again in person!
Have a great weekend, stay safe #Holmston Heroes!
P4 Sumdog Champions!
It’s Competition Time!
It’s time to dust off your wooden spoons and put your pinny on.
We are having a ‘Lockdown’ Cook Off Competition
The details are in the picture . Time to get everyone involved, its a team effort! Let make our ‘Lockdown’ favourites and share them with our Holmston family.
Post your entries into your Teams page by Thursday 4th June. Good luck!
Sports Day Fun!
Well done to you all for taking part in our first virtual Sports Day. There was a huge amount of creativity shown and lots of energy! Mrs Reid will be busy totalling up all the house points. Here are just some of your photos and videos.
Learning During Lockdown!
Its great to see what you have been up to – baking, exercising, dying hair, exploring and sports day. This is on top of the more formal work set by the teachers! Well done everyone!
Wednesday News Update 13.5.20
I hope you are all trying to keep up with your reading and if you are in P4 to P7 make sure that you are going onto Accelerated Reader to complete the quizes – this way we can aim to reach 1,000,000 words in May! I have just read “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse” by Charlie Mackesy. It’s really enjoyable – I hope you like the pictures from it on this post.
The Holmston staff were in the hub yesterday supporting our key workers that do not have any childcare. It is very difficult for children to socially distance and going forward these are challenges we will we all have to think about.
Growth Mindsets
It is really important during these challenging times to make sure that we are still trying to promote thinking with a growth mindset with the children. Especially when it comes to curriculum areas like maths. Please don’t say to your child things like, “I found maths difficult” or “Maths is hard”. This can have a huge impact on children for the rest of their lives. Please have a look through the section on ‘Growth Mindsets’ on the school website for ideas and vocabulary to further support your child to think positively about learning.
Parent Maths Workshops
We will be organising some parental workshops very soon with Mr. Scott Morrow. These will be via ‘Zoom’ and open to our parents in P2 – P7. Scott will demonstrate the strategies and tools we use in school and answer any questions you may have. Scott is setting Maths challenges each Friday and if you need any support with any area of maths you can tag him though the class Team page. Look out for further information about this either by email or text. There will be a separate P1 sesssion later on.
Sports Day
This Friday would have been our Sports Day – so it will probably rain! Please upload your sporty photos along with your house colour into your class Team so that we can score and add to the House Point totals. We look forward to seeing you in action!
Thursday Update
It was great to see some of your happy faces yesterday – it really made my day! Keep an eye on our Twitter page and if I am in school jotters will be availabe in the playground – if you are passing on your daily exercise. Please remember to socially distance.
It is another long weekend and I know the teachers have been posting ideas all to do with VE day – please post any VE day celebrations or activities into Teams.
Here are some ideas you could do for a virtual VE day stay at home celebration.
Mrs Reid has been busy setting up the online House Points – she will keep track of any that have been awarded and if you are in P4-P7 take part in our Accelerated Reader Challenge to get additional House Points. Details are below.
Reading Challenge House Point Competition
We are challenging all children in Primaries 4-7 at Holmston Primary to read as many words as they can over the month of May.
Our target number of words is 1,000,000.
So far pupils have read 188,160 words.
We will be tracking the number of words read through Accelerated Reader. Children in Primaries 4-7 all have a username and password for this. Each time they complete a quiz the number of words in the book they have read is recorded. We will add these up to get the total number of words for each child, each class and the school collectively.
The child in each class that has read the most number of words each week will be awarded 10 House Points.
Come on Holmston. Let’s be millionaire readers!
Have a great long weekend and we’ll be back on Monday! Stay safe!
Well done, Katie
Well done to Katie for putting in lots of effort and practise and achieving this!
Star Wars Revenge of the Fifth!
We had some great ideas in our Star Wars Day. Here are some of the pictures. Well done everyone -it looks like you have had a lot of fun! We’ll give those Sith a run for their mony!
Here are some of your fantastic videos (we think some of the mums and dads enjoyed this task too!)
Brilliant work everyone!
Star Wars Day – May the 4th be with you!
Today is Star Wars Day – here are some ideas you might like to try out – you will of course have your own creative thoughts!
In each of the pictures there are some ‘odd ones out’ – characters that shouldn’t be there or maybe they’re from anothr film! Bonus points for naming them and saying why they are the odd one out.
Picture 1
Mr Hardy and his ‘friends’ are getting ready for Star Wars Day. Can you spot the odd one out? Comment if you spot them and bonus points for working out who they are and where they are from!
Answer – at the top left of the laptop – that’s Charon – The Devil’s Boatman from Clash of the Titans (the original film).
Picture 2 – These are the droids you’re looking for!
Luke is buying some droids from the Jawas. He needs them for helping out on Uncle Ben’s Farm – which ones would you pick? Can you design a droid that would help you? What would they do? What is their name? R2-D2 can fix starships, C3-PO can speak lots of different languages. Who shouldn’t be here though? – they’re not from Tattoine!
Answer – back right that’s VINCENT from The Black Hole and front right – that’s Daggit from Battlestar Galactica (the original series)
Picture 3 – Look out bounty hunters!
The Emperor and Darth Vader have hired this collection of mean bounty hunters to track down our heroes. Can you create a bounty hunter? What do they look like? What weapons do they use? What is their spaceship called and what does it look like? Boba Fett is my favourite – his ship is called….(bonus points from the answer!) Can you spot the two ‘bogus’ bounty hunters?
Answers – Third from right – that’s Princess Leia in her Boushh disguise and lurking at the back – that big red robot – it’s Maximillian from The Black Hole! Bobba Fett’s ship was called Slave 1.
Photograph 4 – Party at the Palace!
The guys from the Mos Eisley canteen are visiting Jabba the Hutt’s Palace for a party. Sy Snootles has just released a new single! They come from all over the universe. Can you design a new alien species? Draw a picture and create a factfile. What planet do they come from? How are they adapted to life on this planet? What languages do they speak? How tall do they grow? You could add in lots of your own details. Bib Fortuna has spotted someone that does not belong here – can you?
Answer – lurking at the back – looking at lot like Emporer Ming from Flash Gordon – is Kelek, an evil sorcerer from Advanced Dungeons and Dragons!
You can upload any of your pictures into Teams and we’ll share some on here. Remember – may the force be with you!
Friday Update
What a busy week it has been – Holmston and the other Cluster staff worked at the Forehill Hub this week looking after children of Key Workers. Every Cluster is responsible for running one of the hub schools across the authority.
Staff have also been very busy with the online learning, reviewing the work of the school and starting to plan and make arrangements for our return and next session. However, we still do not know when this will happen or what it will look like.
We are also starting to plan for our new P1 intake – which will be very different this year and we are developing a webpage to help new parents find out about Holmston.
In the meantime – remember Monday and Friday next week are public holidays so no new work will go up onto Teams on these days. However, Monday is Star Wars Day – Mr Hardy and his ‘friends’ are getting ready for this. Can you spot the odd one out? Comment if you spot them and bonus points for working out who they are and where they are from!
Remember to upload any Star Wars themed photos into your Teams – there are house points available for your creative entries!
Friday is also VE Day – we’d like to see any pictures of you celebrating too!
As always, take care, keep safe and if we can help in anyway please contact us via the school email.
Have a great long weekend.
Maths Resources from Nrich
This has just been sent out from Nrich – a great Maths site:
We’re really enjoying hearing from students who have been working on the tasks from our latest primary and secondary Maths at Home features. Don’t forget you can share your students’ thinking on Twitter.
If you’ve not already seen it, you may also like to take a look at our Maths Fair resources which include a variety of our favourite hands-on tasks your students can try offline, on their own or with family members.
Talent Lockdown Finalist – We Need Your Votes!
One of our pupils, Katie has made it through to the Talent Lockdown for Musical Theatre Final. Please click on a link and vote for her!
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